TEGLU threatens demo over influx of pirated textiles

THE TEXTILE, Garment and Leather Employees Union (TEGLU) is demanding that the cost of utilities be slashed by 50 percent.

It is also demanding the removal of VAT on locally produced textile prints to save local textile manufacturing companies from collapse.

According to TEGLU, local textile manufacturing companies have sent home about 90 percent of their workers due to the influx of pirated wax prints, high taxes and statutory levies as well as high cost of raw materials and utilities.

General Secretary of TEGLU, Abraham Koomson, told Starr Business that textile workers will soon hit the streets if government does not reconstitute a taskforce to enable it visit point of sales and make arrests.

“As we speak the taskforce is only restricting itself to the entry points. And that is not working. The pirated wax prints are all over and the industry is collapsing. Some of the companies have not paid their workers for November, December and January. The situation is terrible. So we are preparing to hit the streets in the next few weeks if nothing changes,” he said.

Mr Koomson also predicted that the tax stamps being introduced by the Ghana Revenue Authority to check the dumping of products in the markets will fail unless the implementation is devoid of experimentation.

With a workforce of about 27,000 in the 1970s the local textile industry is now employing about 3,000 people due to several debilitating factors.